Splatter-paint-style LP covers? Eff the man, kill your television lyrics? Early nineties long hair? Two bass players? Liberally used wah-wah pedals? The cheeky positivity of youth? A guy name Rat? English alt rockers Ned’s Atomic Dustbin had it all and they spoke directly to my long-haired, cheekily positive high school self.

Taking their name from a British comedy radio show in 50s + 60s, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin formed in 1987 while some of the members were still in their teens. That youthful idealism shined through in the band’s early music, the best of which was displayed on their debut, God Fodder.

We have a house where I’m in your hair
I’ll go spare and leave you happy in there

The band evolved later in life in a Jesus Jones-esque way into a more 90s keyboard-/snyth-heavy format that I never quite dug 100%. But this first album and the stand-out tracks on it—”Cut Up”, “Grey Cell Green”, “Kill Your Television”, and my pick here, “Happy”—still to this day hold up as a fine example of the alternative music genre that was quickly coalescing around the Dave Kendall era 120 Minutes. In a pre-grunge, pre-Nirvana world, when alternative was still underground and an actual alternative to the mainstream, the band’s songs provide an emotional touchstone for me to a formative time. Beyond that, though, the songs are just really, really good, even to this day.

Like so many 90s bands of late, Ned’s enjoyed a brief reunion tour a couple years back, but I’ll continue to hold on to these songs in their original state as both a nostalgic indulgence and as legitimate current day favorites.

Edit: After posting this initially, my friend since my high school days, Brian, reminded me of this other awesome, hard-to-finf B-side from Ned’s, “Twenty Three Hour Toothache” and I had just had to share it too. Enjoy.

I promise we’ll get off the meta train soon, but Paul’s post last week on Norma Fraser’s excellent take on Cat Stevens’ “The First Cut is the Deepest” got me thinking about my favorite female fronted reggae track, “Breaking Up” by the grandfather of rocksteady, Alton Ellis.

The song went through a number of variations over the years—thus the bevy of release dates listed—but my favorite is this one he did with his sister, Hortense Ellis, taking lead vocals.

When you looked at me and you said goodbye
You made me cry
You made me cry

Alton—born in Kingston, Jamaica—had a long and storied career in music, starting at a very young age in a family of music-lovers and writing + performing up until the end of his life in 2008, when succumbed to cancer at age 70.

As a Jamaican official said at Alton’s funeral, “even as we mourn the great Alton Ellis, we must give thanks for his monumental contribution to the development of Jamaica’s popular music.”

Plus he had more than twenty children, so that’s quite a legacy.

You can get this particular release on the excellent Respect to Studio One compilation, which I’d highly recommend for any lovers of early reggae, rocksteady, and ska. It also features some great tracks from the Heptones and Lone Ranger, among others.

Well that didn’t take long, things are already getting a bit meta around here. Yeah yeah, I know, meta?! Does anyone still even say that? What is this, the aughts? That would barely even make the 10-year cut-off rule for this site.

Fortunately, my poor use of forgotten memes notwithstanding, we’re in safe territory here as this particular song most definitely fits the bill for Forgotten Favorite.

Troy’s post earlier this week reminded me of Norma Fraser‘s excellent reggae cover of this Cat Stevens‘ classic. “The First Cut Is The Deepest” is probably one of the most covered songs ever, and I would argue that this version is amongst the finest.

Why? Because it’s pretty, rocks steady, and makes you want to move. What else could you ask for on a Friday afternoon?

We lived 126 miles away from one another, my boyfriend and I, for four long years. I was in L.A., he was in San Diego. The well meaning people of the universe insisted that it would never work out, that the distance would ruin us for one another, that we should break up before college even began because it would make things too complicated.

And in the night, I could be helpless
I could be lonely, sleeping without you
And in the day, everything’s complex
There’s nothing simple, when I’m not around you

They, it turns out, were wrong and that boyfriend would eventually become my husband.

I drove those 126 miles so often that I swear my car could have navigated the path on its own.

There is one song that immediately takes me back to a simpler time when all that stood between us was miles of congested ocean hugging asphalt.

“When You’re Gone,” by The Cranberries.

From 1996’s To The Faithful Departed, the song was written by lead singer Dolores O’Riordan as a tribute to her recently deceased grandfather. Her haunting voice coupled with the lyrics spoke to me. The pain evident for her was as real as it was in my life. This wasn’t just a song about losing loved ones, it was a song about all the pain that comes from the spaces between us — whether those spaces are just merely physical miles or the distance from this mortal life to another.

“I wrote this song for certain reason, but over the years it became something different, songs grow and it means something different to me now. Every time I sing this song I can see my grand-parents, ‘cause when people died, did they really go? Or are they with us? You know you wonder.” — Dolores O’Riordan

Music should be bigger than any one moment, it should evolve and change with us as we evolve and change. It should keep its relevance and above all, it should mean something. It should move us.

This song, it does all that and more.

This song, it transports me back almost 20 years and urges me to smell the salt in the air as my hands grip the steering wheel on an all too familiar drive once more.

Most of my write-ups have been and will continue to be heavily steeped in the punk, post-punk, riot grrrl, electronic, indie, and emo music of the nineties—music I grew up with and that shaped me in many ways socially. I think it’s safe to say Cat Stevens doesn’t really fit into any of those categories though.

I’ll start by saying I’m not at all a longtime Cat Stevens fan. I’d heard him a ton as a kid, mostly through my dad—a huge lover of music—but, with that genre of classic rock proving popular still amongst my parents’ generation and anew in the stoner-jock crowd in middle and high school, I adopted a strident nose-turning-up attitude to anything in the vein, unfairly dismissing all of it as mindless drugged out hippie jam band junk. Years later, with high school a safe distance behind me, and through repeated exposure to lovers of Van Morrison, CCR, and—yes—the Dead, I had to admit that some of that stuff wasn’t half bad. I even, after catching that one amazing episode of Freaks and Geeks, started seeking out the original vinyl for the Grateful Dead’s seminal American Beauty (my partner, Katie, eventually found it online and bought for me, wonderful person that she is).

‘Cause when it comes to being lucky, she’s cursed

When it comes to lovin’ me, she’s worse

As with many others in my generation, my rediscovery of Cat Stevens coincided with Wes Anderson’s inclusion of the man’s music on his soundtrack for Rushmore and just grew from there. I even pushed to have his song, “Two Fine People”, be the song Katie + I had our first dance to at our wedding (the line “Now that I’ve kissed your breast” put the kibosh on that plan).

As most readers likely know, Cat—born Steven Demetre Georgiou in London to a Greek father and Swedish mother—converted to Islam in the late seventies and changed his name to Yusuf Islam, leaving music for a long stretch to devote himself to philanthropic work. He started playing music again and recording studio albums in 2006 and, though his voice and musicianship remains admirable to say the least, his early work still stands head-and-shoulders above the rest. I could chose from myriad favorites here, but I think 1967’s “The First Cut is the Deepest” wins out for me, simply for the sheer remembered surprise that first time I heard it that, hey, that song’s not at all by Rod Stweart OR Sheryl Crow AND it’s really awesome! Who knew.

Kinda like that first time you hear Tom Waits’ original “Downtown Train”.

DAMN YOU, STEWART—STOP RUINING GOOD SONGS!

As every filmmaker knows, music is integral to our experience of cinema. The right soundtrack can mainline straight into our soul and trigger emotions at will, with us none the wiser.

Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual. – David Lynch

A carefully selected song can elevate the impact of a scene and deliver a response more resonant than would be possible with the visuals and dialog alone. The reverse though is also true. If the audience is already familiar with a piece of music, the effect can be jarring, as the viewer begins to reminisce about memories associated with the music and loses suspension of disbelief. The best soundtracks use music written specifically for the film, or songs which have fallen out of the popular consciousness.

When most successful, the song becomes inextricably linked to the scene in which it is featured, as is the case for me with “I’ve Told Every Little Star” by Linda Scott. It’s impossible for me to hear even a split second of the opening “Dum Da-Dum” and not be transported immediately to the off-kilter version of Hollywood as portrayed in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

As the particular scene unfolds, the song increases in the mix several times, hitting its peak volume just as the camera cuts dead center onto a perfectly poised ’60s starlet. Suddenly, the audience has jumped back 40 years and is now watching the movie within the movie. The effect is diminished slightly in the small-screen YouTube clip below, but the impact at full volume when seen in a movie theater is so resounding that I wonder if the scene would have been possible with any other song.

Of course, all of this would be besides the point for our purposes here, if the song weren’t so wonderful on its own merits. I wasn’t around when it was released, but if ever there is cause for me to be nostalgic about a bygone era that I was never a part of, the version of the ’60s represented here is the one I want to visit.

Hidden deep amid alligator swamps, spring break infested beaches and tourists sporting mouse ears, culture actually does exist in Florida. And to demonstrate this, I take you back to 2002. When the raucous, yet melodic four-piece band Against Me! put out a little album known as Reinventing Axl Rose.

Let’s make everybody sing that they are the beginning and ending of everything
That we all are stronger than everything they taught us that we should fear

Released in 2002 by Gainesville’s No Idea Records, this album features two current Against Me! members—singer Laura Jane Grace (then known as Tom Gabel) and guitarist James Bowman who anyone growing up in the St. Pete/Tampa punk scene may recall from his days in The Scams.

From the signature opening drumbeat of the first track title, “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong,” all the way to the slow, muted guitar introducing “Eight Full Hours of Sleep,” the concluding track, this album takes you on an emotional roller coaster representative of stubborn youth, nostalgia, unity, punk and, perhaps most importantly, some young musicians really doing what they believe in.

But it’s track eight that I want to share with you here. Despite how uncool music snobs may find it to favor a title track, some are simply worth honoring. “Reinventing Axl Rose” pays homage to punk in its purest form—simplicity. Doing something for the sake of loving it, bringing together free-thinking people and not really expecting financial gain in return.

This was always one of my Top 10 favorite Against Me! songs and it still is today. I remember the days of standing in the pit with one fist in the air, putting my arm around the person next to me while together we sang the “whoa-ohs” and just feeling so united, welcomed and content amongst both friends and strangers alike.

Even in my adult life, this band and this song still have the power to move me. After not seeing many shows for a few years, I opted to see Against Me! on a whim in Brooklyn a few years back. I hadn’t really heard their newest album at the time, so I wasn’t expecting much. But as they opened up I was immediately taken back to that feeling of strength, optimism and hope for society that I’d experienced around 15 years ago when I’d first seen them perform… Then I went home and listened to their music for the next few weeks straight.

Last night, I called up our local public radio station and won a pair of tickets to see longtime favorite Canadian pop band, Stars, which is awesome for three reasons:

My office glows all night long,
It’s a nuclear show and the stars are gone
Elevator, elevator, take me home

1. Free show, obviously;

2. The venue’s walking distance from our house, which is not exactly common place for Los Angeles;

3. It’s an all to rare opportunity to see an independent pop band that’s been going strong for over 15 years.

Honestly, it amazes me that this song, the excellent “Elevator Love Song”—from the band’s second studio album, Heart—even qualifies for this retrospective music journal. To this day it remains on many a playlist of mine and it just doesn’t sound dated like most tracks from 2003 should and do.

The obvious, most admirable quality of this band is how they manage to write truly appealing pop music year after year, album after album, for 15 years, eight full-lengths, and five EPs.

But the other thing I’ve always loved about this band is how great they are at shifting the dynamic energy of a song, from quiet and/or sparse to rollickingly anthemic. I’ve written about this before, over at our studio’s Web journal, but there’s nothing like that admittedly formulaic explosiveness.

Somehow these guys have kept it sounding anything but uninspired all this time.